A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for processing an article to be processed such as a semiconductor substrate or an LCD substrate and an apparatus for transferring such an article, and more particularly to an apparatus for applying a processing liquid such as a resist liquid to the surface of the article to be processed and an apparatus and a method for transferring an article to be resist-processed.
B. Description of the Related Art
The general method of manufacturing semiconductor device comprises a series of processes in which photoresist is applied to a semiconductor wafer, a reduced circuit pattern is formed by means of lithographic technique, the circuit pattern is transcribed to the photoresist and the transcribed circuit pattern is developed.
One of such processing methods is disclosed in the Laid-open Japanese Utility Model Application Publication No. 62-120341. Transfer of a semiconductor wafer by means of a belt and by means of vacuum suction as semiconductor transferring technique is widely known from Laid-open Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 63-229290, for example.
Instead of a resist liquid having low viscosity which is more commonly employed in an apparatus to apply resist or the like, when a process liquid having high viscosity such as polyamide is applied to a wafer, the polyamide is not removed from the peripheral side wall of the wafer by a side rinse process but is likely to remain there.
Attachment of a residue of the process liquid to the portion of the transfer mechanism which contacts a wafer makes it hard to release the wafer from the transfer mechanism and the wafer cannot be transferred smoothly.
Further, a problem is likely to occur where polyamide attached to and left on the periphery of wafer is peeled off and gets attached to the body of the wafer.
It is required in some processes that the side process should not be performed even if a resist liquid having normally low viscosity is used. If wafers are moved in the process apparatus with the resist liquid applied to the wafers in these cases, the transfer mechanism tends to be contaminated by the resist liquid. The resist is dried and becomes contaminants. Due to vibrations or the like produced during transportation, the dried resist is likely to be peeled off and get attached again to the wafers as particles.